by Jane Langton
404 C Crust: Isopod: body very flat crawling on sand
bank at lowest ebb.
Susceptible as he was, it was impossible for Homer to be unmoved. In this pleasant room in the English countryside he felt the heat of tropical latitudes, the winds of the Atlantic, and the rocking of the ship that had kept its naturalist seasick all the way around the world. He imagined Darwin going ashore whenever the Beagle dropped anchor, eating roast armadillo in the Argentine, buying cigars in Buenos Aires and biting his matches alight, looking eagerly at every organic or inorganic thing, collecting every kind of mineral, insect, butterfly, and mammal, reaching into tide pools along a rocky shore. Back on shipboard, as the Beagle sailed by the light of an erupting volcano, he would pick up one of these little books and jot down every creature—taken by one of the sailors out of a large fish; water but slightly salt.
“How’re you doing?” said Hal, reaching for another book.
“Whoops, sorry. I’m way behind. Daydreaming. Won’t happen again.”
Within the hour they were finished. They had a list of entries—crabs that were not on the museum list, that were not to be found in the museum, either in the drawers of Beagle specimens or in the rows of jars in the Invertebrate Spirit Store. Mission accomplished.
It was a long way back. Homer dozed. Hal flipped through the new lists, reading the entries over and over, memorizing the numbers. Sometimes Freddy Dubchick’s fresh face obtruded itself, and his thoughts were violently diverted. Her face is round like a smooth stone. Margo’s is triangular like—what is it like?—oh, God, I know, the head of a praying mantis. Then Hal’s mind would jump back to Bahía Blanca and the centipedes with long blue legs. What was their number? Thirty-five. Centipedes at Bahía Blanca, thirty-five.
Back in Oxford at last, climbing into a cab in the dark, Homer was sleepy and starving, Hal was merciless.
“Parks Road,” he said to the driver, “the University Museum. We’ve got to find out,” he said to Homer. “We’ve got to see if the numbers match.”
“Oh, right,” said Homer drowsily, thinking of the contents of the little rented refrigerator in the improvised kitchen in the Besse Building. “Big excitement if they do match, right? Big discovery? Headline news?”
“Well, it will certainly be a big satisfaction,” admitted Hal, trying to suppress his excitement.
In the museum a sawhorse blocked the south staircase. Hal and Homer skirted it and climbed the stairs, sidling past the scaffolding. The dim lamps over the courtyard barely lit the shadowy gallery, but Hal in his eagerness could have found his way in pitch darkness. Unlocking the door of the Zoology Office, he plunged in, snatching the Down House lists from his pocket.
Homer switched on the lights and watched him kneel beside the table to study the labels on the jars, which no longer said Jugged Hare or Boiled Brisket. Helen Farfrae had soaked off the cookbook labels. Hal kept looking down at the list in his hand and up again at the jars, then down again, shaking his head.
“What’s the matter?” said Homer sleepily. “Don’t they match?”
“No, goddamn it,” said Hal, getting up off his knees. “They don’t match at all.” He looked angrily at Homer. “The numbers on the jars don’t make sense. They’re completely random. This one’s numbered seventeen, and here’s a three thousand seventeen. And there are only about eighty jars all together.”
Homer had a bright thought. “How many things did Darwin collect? Wouldn’t the numbers be sort of miscellaneous, scattered among all the other kinds of things? Guanacos and tortoises and beetles and whatnot?”
“Oh, sure, but his numbers only go up to fifteen hundred or so. This is some miserable collection gathered a long time ago by some nut or other, and totally neglected. I’m afraid it doesn’t have anything to do with Charles Darwin at all.”
“But why,” said Homer, “did somebody dump it in the museum?”
“Damned if I know.” Hal turned out the lights, and they started gloomily down the south staircase, dodging once again around the sawhorse that acted as a barrier. “Careful,” said Hal. “You can’t tell the stairs from the boards they’ve laid over the scaffolding. Watch out.”
They parted company in the driveway. But as Homer slogged across the lawn, Hal called after him, “Of course there’s still one more thing we can do, although it’s a hell of a job.”
“What’s that?” said Homer, his mind’s eye fixed on a bottle of cold beer.
“We can look at the contents of the damn jars. Maybe they’ll match the list of missing crustaceans, even if the labels aren’t right.”
And cheese! There was a big smelly cheese in there somewhere.
“Is it possible to figure out what they are? I mean when they’re in such bad shape?”
“Oh, probably. At least some of them. I’ll put that Rhodes scholar kid onto it. What’s his name? Soffit, Mark Soffit. Test him out. See if he knows one crustacean from another.”
CHAPTER 20
I am out of patience with the Zoologists … for their mean quarrelsome spirit.
Charles Darwin, letter to J. S. Henslow
Mark Soffit was determined to find the missing Darwin crabs. He was convinced that they were lost in the museum somewhere. He had no keys to locked offices, but there was nothing to stop him from knocking on doors.
He began with a room where a geology technician was using a pressurized drill to free the bones of a pliosaur from its stony matrix. “Hi, there,” he said, speaking up over the noise of the drill. “My name’s Mark Soffit. I’m a Rhodes scholar. I’m interested in what’s going on around here.”
The technician nodded, then bent over the pliosaur again with his back to Mark. His drill whined. Mark explored the room, softly opening cupboards and drawers.
In the new Entomology Room, where two other technicians were setting up an exhibit about the habits of locusts, he found an interesting closet, but it yielded nothing, only a couple of discarded displays on anthophorine bees in Israel and a box labeled DUNG BEETLES, TANZANIA.
In the Mineralogy Office two graduate students were cataloguing new donations. “Look at this bottinoite,” said one of the mineralogists. “See the label? It’s from Ysbyty Ystwyth in Wales. My sister goes out with a guy from Ysbyty Ystwyth. It’s a small world.” He looked up at Mark. “Well, hello there, you want something?”
“I’m a Rhodes scholar,” recited Mark. “My name’s Mark Soffit, and I’m interested in what’s going on around here.”
“Oh, well, we’re pretty busy right now,” said one of the mineralogists, dismissing him.
His partner winked at him. “Why don’t you give him your paper on compreignacite from Cornwall? That would be a start.”
“No, thanks,” said Mark, refusing to be put off. “I’ll just take a look around.” The mineralogists stared at him suspiciously as he opened a closet door.
It was no good. Mark gave up and went back to the Zoology Office. Surely there were nooks and crannies in this ancient office that hadn’t been examined in years.
But Hal Shaw was in the Zoology Office, and at once he wanted to put Mark to work. “Look, how’d you like to try your hand at identifying these things? We were hoping they’d match the list of missing Darwin crabs, but the numbers don’t fit.”
Mark looked with distaste at the wizened contents of the jars on the table. “Identify them? But there’s nothing to identify. They’re half-rotten.”
“Just see what you can do.”
Mark felt put-upon. It was an insult. They were palming off on him the dirtiest job, the most unrewarding. This wasn’t legitimate research. Dr. Shaw himself said they weren’t really the missing crabs.
Hal left him to it. Mark stared at the ugly jars. He was filled with resentment. If Hal Shaw thought a Rhodes scholar like himself was going to spend his valuable time in Oxford sorting decomposing trash, he had another thing coming.
When Professor Dubchick came in a moment later with an armful of books, Mark went over Hal�
�s head at once, and complained about the assignment. “Professor Dubchick, I wonder if I could read with another tutor? Like yourself, for instance? I mean, Dr. Shaw wants me to identify all this putrefying stuff on the table here.” Mark waved his hand contemptuously at the jars of desiccated crabs. “I feel I should have a more worthwhile assignment. I mean, as a Rhodes scholar I didn’t cross the ocean in order to—”
Professor Dubchick interrupted him sharply. “Why did you cross the ocean, Mr. Soffit?”
“Well,” blustered Mark, “I thought you people were at the cutting edge around here. I thought—”
“Perhaps this putrefying stuff is the cutting edge,” said William. Without another word he put the books down softly on his desk and left the room.
Mark’s face turned purple with mortification. Picking up one of the jars, he stared at the cloned fragments inside it, then slammed it back down and went in search of Hal Shaw.
He found him in the lecture hall, battering at the blackboard with a piece of chalk. Swiftly Mark made it clear that he wasn’t about to work on those crummy mildewed jars.
“Well, then,” said Hal, his voice cool, “perhaps I’d better find someone else to do them.”
“Perhaps you’d better.” Mark smiled, having won this encounter. He wasn’t about to allow a guy only a few years older than himself to put one over on him.
Margo Shaw, too, was unimpressed with the jars of desiccated crabs. She stared at Hal, disbelieving. “You mean you want me to top up all this trash?”
“Well, yes, I do.” Hal was irritated. “They’ve got to be re-hydrated with a special formula. Here, I’ve mixed up some to start with, a three percent solution of Decon 90 in de-ionized water. They’re in desperate need of care. Look at them, they’ve been neglected for years.”
“I am looking at them. What the hell are they doing here? They’re disgusting. Who says they’re Darwin’s? You said the numbers don’t match. Why don’t you throw them out?”
“Because Professor Dubchick is curious about them,” said Hal defensively. “And so am I.”
“Oh, it’s Dubchick’s idea, is it?” Margo looked sly. “Look, Hal, why don’t you grow up? The old guy is past it. He’s doddering. You’re wasting your time. Dubchick’s a has-been, and his daughter is a tramp. Listen, let me tell you what else I found out about her.”
Hal blew up. Margo gushed a stream of poison, and stalked out of the office. Hal calmed his rioting nerves and went looking for Professor Dubchick.
He found him in the courtyard, leaning against a stone pedestal, jotting a note to himself. Above Dubchick’s head Francis Bacon looked down at the two of them shrewdly, and warned, There is no other course but to begin the work anew.
It was precisely what Hal had in mind. Trembling with anger, he told Professor Dubchick he would work on the crabs himself. It would, he said, be an honor.
William smiled at him and put away his notes. “No, no, you’ve got your own important work to do. Tell you what, my book can wait. I’ll do the jars myself. Dr. Farfrae and I, we’ll do them together.”
And they did. They spent a couple of days carrying out the process of rehydration, then got to work. After removing the contents of the first jar to a sterilized saucer, William probed carefully, and examined minute slices under Helen’s powerful microscope. “I think this is a species of Cancroid,” he said, peering into the eyepiece. He stood up. “What do you think?”
It was pleasant work, if a little foul-smelling. “It’s going to take weeks,” said William, as Helen sat down. “Can you take so much time?”
“Of course I can, if you can. Whenever you’re ready with your last chapters, I’ll get back to checking references. In the meantime—” Helen lowered her head and stared into the microscope. “It certainly does look like a Cancer. Cancer gracilis, perhaps?” She looked up at William and asked the nagging question that had been troubling them from the beginning. “But why? Why did someone leave them there, hidden under that cloth, and say nothing? Who was it? And where have all these jars been for the last century and a half?”
“Oh, Dr. Farfrae, you’re assuming they’re the missing Darwin crabs.” William shook his head. “Don’t forget, they may not be.”
“But look, there’s a Cancer on the list.” Helen snatched up one of the typed pages she had copied from the Down House list. “Number 311, July 1832, picked up in Monte Video. This may be the very same one.”
“But Cancer is a very common crab. I had one for lunch the other day.” William bent over the microscope again. “All we can do is carry on, and see how many matches we can get, if any.”
“I hope,” said Helen dreamily, watching him make delicate focusing adjustments, “Detective Inspector Mukerji is working on it.”
“You told him about the jars?” murmured William, staring at the translucent fragment of a maxilla.
“Oh, yes. He seemed most interested. I told him we’d tried to be careful about fingerprints, and he said he was grateful. He sent over a detective constable named Ives to take prints from the jars, and he was very thorough.”
William looked up. “Did he find anything?”
“Our prints, of course. Yours and mine. We’ve been a little careless. Nothing else. All of them showed the imprint of leather gloves.” Helen moved away from the table and looked out the window at the building next door. “How strange to be working on something that came to us so mysteriously, like a gift from—” She paused, afraid of being melodramatic.
“From the unknown,” said William, sounding melodramatic himself.
“From the dark, I was going to say,” said Helen. “A gift from the dark.”
The truth was that Gopal Mukerji was in the dark himself. He too was bewildered by the mysterious things that had happened in the Oxford University Museum during the night of October fourth and the early morning of the fifth.
In the first place, he took with a grain of salt Dr. Farfrae’s story about the person she called “the creature,” the one she had seen climbing the museum roof. In Mukerji’s opinion, Farfrae was an odd woman. Strange, the way she had wandered around the courtyard in the middle of the night. It was not what you would call normal behavior. And it was rumored that her family life was troubled. Just for the hell of it Detective Inspector Mukerji sat down in front of his office computer and tapped out her husband’s name.
There he was, John Farfrae, Woodstock Road, Kidlington. Drunk and disorderly, two convictions. Disturbing the peace, complaint by a neighbor, raised voices, family fight, another conviction.
Family fight? How strange that the dignified woman with the gray hair and the D.Phil, degree from Oxford University should be raising her voice in a domestic battle with her husband in the town of Kidlington! Mukerji wondered if another dispute had followed the publication in the newspaper of the story she had told him. She had been so anxious to keep it from her husband, but of course it had leaked out.
And then there was the doubtful prank of the two young people from Christ Church, their so-called rescue of the painting of the extinct bird. Was it too much of a coincidence that they should have been there in the museum at precisely the moment when the young night watchman was falling to his death? Surely the statistical chances were small.
The final perplexities were two. Was the thing Dr. Farfrae had seen on the roof of the museum the night watchman, or someone else? If not Bobby Fenwick, then who was it? And what had become of him? At the moment, the whole thing was beyond Mukerji’s understanding, and he threw up his hands.
CHAPTER 21
Many cock birds do not so much pursue the hen, as display their plumage, perform strange antics, and pour forth their song in her presence.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
DIARY OF FREDERICKA DUBCHICK
Americans are so interesting. I’ve always liked them, but I used to lump them all together. I thought
1) they were loud and vulgar,
2) they talked through their noses,
3) they said anything that came into their heads, without British restraint and reserve and all that bilgewater.
Now I can see that they’re all different. I mean they’re just as different from one another as we are. Look at Homer Kelly, for instance. He doesn’t talk funny and neither does, his wife Mary. Homer talks fast and is so amusing and excited, and he uses good grammar. Sometimes he sounds like a phony Englishman, but then he hits his head and apologizes and tries to stop. He has a big nose, but he doesn’t talk through it.
His wife talks like a New Englander, that’s what Stuart Grebe tells me. And, oh, Stuart is so funny! He speaks like somebody in an old gangster film. Then there’s Mark Soffit. I can’t figure him out at all. Father doesn’t like him. He hasn’t said so, but I can tell. Mark doesn’t say much, he just stares.
Hal and Margo Shaw came to dinner the other day, and I made something from my new French cookbook, Filets de Poisson Gratinh a la Parisienne—in other words, fish poached in white wine. The sauce was supposed to be like velvet, but instead it was lumpy. The whole thing was an awful flop, but Father laughed, and Hal had three helpings (so kindly, because it really was the most terrible failure), and then he insisted on helping with the dishes, while Father talked to Margo in the sitting room, and we had such a good time in the kitchen. Hal juggled the salt and pepper pots and the knives and forks.
I challenged him to try our best teacups, but he refused. He knows all there is to know about crustaceans, and he’s found new sorts of fossils in the Swiss Alps on remote mountain peaks. Father likes him.
So do I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Margo Shaw left most of her dinner on her plate!
I’ve promised to go to Butford with Oliver. It’s the home of his sacred ancestors, all those bishops and archbishops and Knights of the Garter. At first I said I was too busy, but he said it would just be two or three hours because it’s only eighteen miles away, so I said all right, but the truth is I don’t want to go! A POX ON BISHOPS AND KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER! (Putting a pox on things is my favorite new curse, it sounds so eighteenth-century, like Henry Fielding or Samuel Johnson.)